


home ("the last run" - sequel)

by RecoveringTheSatellites



Series: no curse renaissance [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, F/M, No Curse Renaissance, S3b canon divergence, a bit of angsty fluff, and a happy end, and resolution and closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28921992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecoveringTheSatellites/pseuds/RecoveringTheSatellites
Summary: Emma stops running.She stops running because she finally knows what she wants.Now all she has to do is talk to Neal and Henry.A litte bit of yelling and a lot of kid wisdom, rewarded with a generous dose of softness and fluff.(Sequel tothe last run- and it does help to read that first, but i guess this could stand alone.).Also known as my contribution to CS January Joy 2021!
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Series: no curse renaissance [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121255
Comments: 27
Kudos: 68
Collections: CS January Joy





	home ("the last run" - sequel)

  
  


“Hey,” he says, soft and quiet. “It’s OK.”

She’s been crying forever, and she doesn’t even know why. The tears just came out of nowhere, and----  
no.  


Not out of nowhere.

This is not how this story starts.

It starts at the diner, with Neal at full volume, complete with expletives and enough indignation to furnish a scenery-chewing  _ Shakespeare in the Park  _ production. Which, incidentally, is being put on in the Boston Commons at this very moment.

Boston, where she used to live. Where life was different and less complicated and lonely. 

Boston, where she never did belong.

But now she’s in Storybrooke and Neal is gathering steam and it’s all Emma’s fault. After all she did call Neal, and then she did go to meet him at the diner, and she did sit down and say, “We have to talk.”

She did do all of those things.

“This is about Hook,” Neal says before she’s even settled in the booth, poison dripping from the word ‘Hook’, and Emma steels herself. This is not going to be pretty.

She can feel Granny’s stare from behind the counter, can see Grumpy and Smee start to study their menus in rapt fascination. Can see Ruby settle herself on a barstool for a front-row seat to the drama.

Emma takes a deep breath.

“His name is Killian,” she says, and Neal goes off like a rocket.

In front of everyone.

There is  _ YouAreTearingThisFamilyApart _ , and there is  _ HenryDeservesBetter _ , and there is  _ YouNeverThinkOfAnyoneButYourself _ , but the one that gets her is  _ IWon’tSeeMySonInTheHandsOfAFuckingPirate _ . 

_ A fucking Pirate. _

Emma sees red.

“ _ Your _ son?” She spits the words with enough venom of her own to kill any number of Shakespeare protagonists. Neal looks taken aback, cut off in his diatribe.

“Tell me, Neal Cassidy, how is he your son? Because he’s barely  _ my _ son.” She can see Neal gear up for a response and heads him off at the pass. “Tell me then, Neal. What’s Henry’s favorite color? What’s his favorite food? What’s the thing he loves most? The thing he wants most? His greatest fear?”

“Don’t give me that.” Neal’s voice is cold. “It’s not like I’ve had time to get to know him.” He leans forward, his eyes even colder than his voice. “You’re not being fair. I’ve barely met him.”

Emma thinks of endless days on a ship carried by a shadow, of weeks and months in Storybrooke since they got back.

“So don’t give me the goddamn third degree.” Neal’s voice is grating on her already frayed nerves and she shudders, but he doesn’t notice. “That’s what this time is for. Getting to know each other, becoming a family again.”

Weeks and months. Weeks and months since they returned from Neverland, weeks and months during which just being around Neal has felt nothing but wrong, weeks and months after which he can’t tell her what her son’s favorite color is.

What  _ his _ son’s favorite color is.

Emma shakes her head. Neal always was great with excuses.

“And now you swoop in here with your fucking libido on full display for the whole town to see and ruin  _ everything _ . Before I even have a chance of bonding with my son.”

His voice is so loud.

Neal is practically yelling and the head of every single patron in the diner is  _ ducked _ . Even Ruby’s.

Emma squares her shoulders. Thinks of Killian, thinks of how careful he is with her, how patient, how thoughtful. How he lets her breathe and gives her space and always lets her be herself. How he likes her for who she is, not in spite of it.

Thinks of how light and happy she is with him, how much joy it brings.

But she’s not telling Neal any of that.

There is only one thing she can say to him, because she sure as hell is not going to take the bait and discuss anything involving the word ‘libido’, period.

No, there is only one point to make here. She leans forward. Gets into his space for a change. 

“Then tell me, Neal,” she says, voice low and cutting and  _ calm _ , “how it is that after all this time you still know nothing about Henry?” Her eyes flash. “When Killian can answer every single one of the questions I asked you? Every one?”

Neal gasps.

Emma gets up.

“I’m really sorry,” she says in the direction of Granny, who is scrubbing the grill so hard she’s stripping metal. “I’m sorry you all had to hear this.” She looks at Ruby, who shrugs, and then back at Neal, who looks positively apoplectic. 

“We’re done here,” she says. “Neal, think long and hard how you want to play the rest of this. Henry is not a bargaining chip.” She slams her hand down on the table. “Get it?”

She walks out without looking back, which may be the single most difficult thing she’s ever done, and makes a beeline to the  _ Jolly Roger  _ as if pulled by strings. 

Killian is checking the wheel as she stumbles up the gangplank, takes one look at her and simply opens his arms.

Emma starts to cry.

And he lets her, just stands there with his arms around her and lets her, and then he says  _ it’s OK _ in that soft voice full of understanding and it just makes her sob harder.

Minutes pass. They feel like lifetimes. When she finally pulls away and looks up her eyelids feel leaden, and his returning gaze is calm, but worried.

“What happened?” he says.

Emma shrugs. “I talked to Neal. It did not go well.” With a groan she leans her forehead against his chest. 

He bends down to kiss her cheek and and whispers, “Tell me.”

But she can’t. He’s liable to go and defend her honor or something equally sweet and chivalrous and useless.

“It’s not important,” she says instead. “Let’s just say I made it clear that you---” she takes a deep breath--- “that we---”

Her voice trails off. Silence falls.

Then he lifts her head gently by the chin and forces her to look at him.

“Are you uncertain, love?” His eyes are large and sad. “Are you unsure about me?”

The way he says it takes her breath away for a moment and she suddenly realizes that she has never been more sure of anything in her life. How can she possibly doubt him when he’s looking at her like that? 

She shakes her head and smiles. 

“No,” she says. “I’m sure.”

And she reaches up to kiss him, to show him beyond any shadow of a doubt just how certain she is. She feels his sigh of relief through her entire body.

  
  


.

  
  


An hour later finds her on the wooden platform of the playground castle, watching as Henry walks towards her. His book bag looks heavy and his cheeks are red from the icy wind. Emma’s toes are already frozen.

Henry throws his backpack on the platform and pulls himself up to sit next to Emma and looks at her for a long time.

“I heard,” he finally says.

Emma’s body temperature drops several degrees. “Heard what?”

“There was a scene at the diner? With Neal?”

‘Neal’. Not ‘Dad’. Emma shudders.

“I’m really sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have met him in public.” She cringes. “What did you hear?”

“Just that he was not being nice. That he yelled at you.” Henry frowns. “That’s not OK.”

Emma wants to hug him, hard.

“I’m so sorry,” she says instead. “None of this was about you, you know.”

He looks at her with those eyes that see everything.

“It was a little bit about me,” he says, like he already knows. “It had to be.”

Emma doesn’t know what to say to that. She swallows hard, but nothing comes.

Henry crooks his head as he studies her face. “Do you want him to leave?”

It breaks Emma’s heart, the matter-of-fact way he says it. Like it’s up to her.

“Henry,” she says, and takes his hands. “This is not about me. Neal is your father. And if you want him to stay, he stays. If you want him in your life, he will be in your life. It’s up to you. You and nobody else.”

Henry nods in that earnest, serious way he has.

“But you’re not together,” he finally says.

Emma shakes her head. “No, Henry.” Her voice is raspy. “We are not together. We are not going to be together.”

She squeezes his hands.

“I’m sorry we can’t be a family,” she says. “Not in the traditional sense. But I would never keep you two apart.”

Henry nods again. Then he grins a small, mischievous grin.

“What about Killian?” His eyes flash as his grin grows wider and Emma cringes. Cringes but doesn’t let go of Henry’s hands and doesn’t avert her gaze. Just nods.

“Good,” Henry says, and Emma feels a small glimmer of hope. 

“Good?” She asks.

“Yeah,” Henry answers. “He makes you happy. You make him happy. It’s good.”

And it feels like a metric ton of worry falls away from Emma’s shoulders. She smiles.

“How did you get to be so smart?” she says, and finally pulls him into a hug.

“I got that from my grandparents, of course,” Henry deadpans, and they both laugh out loud.

  
  


.

  
  
  


That night Emma doesn’t sneak.

She walks into Granny’s diner holding Killian’s hand, and they have dinner in front of everyone. Henry comes in halfway through and immediately slides onto Killian’s side of the booth and asks for sailing lessons. Emma watches Killian’s eyes grow very bright as he tells Henry that he is welcome aboard the  _ Jolly _ any time, as long as it’s OK with Emma.

Emma answers that learning to sail might be fun for all of them and Killian beams at her. It makes her so happy to see both of them across from her, smiling in unison. 

Henry steals two onion rings from Killian’s plate on his way out the door and Killian’s smile becomes a smirk as he mumbles  _ like mother like son _ and waggles his eyebrows at her.

Emma laughs out loud.

After dinner they both walk to the  _ Jolly _ together for all the world to see, Killian’s arm around her shoulders and her arm around his waist. He drops the occasional kiss in her hair and she feels warmer than she has in years.

When they get to his cabin she takes off her boots and sits down cross-legged on his bed as he stokes the small oven and pulls out the rum.

“Are you all right, love?” He says as he hands her a glass. “Or was it a bit much?”

She shakes her head and smiles. 

“It feels good to be out in the open,” she says. “With you.”

“It does.” 

He sits down next to her, clinks their glasses together, his eyes dark. Not for the first time Emma thinks about the strain her need for secrecy and silence put on him. Puts on him still. How she keeps asking him to march to the beat of her drum, and he always does.

They drink, and Emma holds her glass up for a refill.

“I’m sorry,” she says as he pours.

“For what?” His voice is light, but she can sense apprehension.

“Always going by what I need,” she says. “Never asking what you need.”

He smiles. It’s wistful, but genuine. “You had a lot to deal with, Emma,” he says and then leans forward to brush his lips past hers. “It was your turn to need things.”

The way he understands her. The way he doesn’t push and just makes room for her life inside of his. She will change that. From now on, she will make room for him inside her own life. They will make a life together.

“I love you,” she says, because it’s high time she told him.

His entire face lights up like a beacon and he puts down his glass, cups her face with his right hand, rubs his thumb across her cheek.

And then he leans forward and kisses her, long and slow and deep.

When he pulls back he leans his forehead against hers.

“I am so happy to hear it,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”

And Emma gets on her knees to hug him, presses herself against him, and as his arms wrap around her she knows,  _ knows _ , finally, finally knows, that she is home.


End file.
